Jules Verne (born 187 years ago on February 8, 1828) is one of the most translated authors in history. (It’s estimated that only Agatha Christie’s works have been translated more frequently since 1979.) This has proved to be a double-edged sword for his reputation, revealing his vast popularity as a writer of travel adventures on the one hand, while also sacrificing some of his literary innovations in favor of his books’ exciting content.

This can be best illustrated by comparing Verne’s reputations between his native France and English-speaking countries. The French see their native son as far more than a genre writer or science fiction pioneer (although he clearly was). When read in his native tongue, his stylistic touches were innovative and experimental enough to inspire surrealist and avant-garde literature in France, and allow him to be examined as a literary figure in his own right. This reputation has been slower to emerge in English-speaking countries, where Verne’s works often suffered from poor translations that snuffed out his unique essence as a writer, and caused him to be seen as a popular writer if not a literary figure.

Of course, it’s also true that Americans have never held popularity against the gifted in the same way as the French. (Verne was shut out of literary academies in France during his lifetime, and his works only got a second hearing there after his death.) And the popularity of Verne’s works must be considered. He spent much of his youth fighting off his father’s attempts to pull him into practicing law, and was twice shattered when parents of women he loved married them off to older men. (The episodes impacted him deeply enough to make the theme of women married against their will a frequently recurring one in his books.)

Finally, his break came through a partnership with the publisher Pierre-Jules Hetzel, whom he met in 1862. The relationship would provide him with what he most needed…an outlet for the writing that he had pursued at the expense of all else (even turning down his father’s law practice a decade earlier). Hetzel enjoyed Verne’s work enough to offer him a flat fee for three books a year, to be published in Hetzel’s magazine first. Verne leapt at the chance for a steady income and a guaranteed outlet for his work.

Hetzel saw the thematic glue of Verne’s work….exciting travel adventures with technological themes…and decided that Verne’s books would make up a loosely connected series called the “Voyages Extraordinaires.” Hetzel said Verne would “outline all the geographical, geological, physical, and astronomical knowledge amassed by modern science and to recount, in an entertaining and picturesque format that is his own, the history of the universe.” (Oh, is that all?) Almost all of Verne’s novels are part of the “Extraordinary Voyages” sequence, including his most beloved works: “Journey to the Center of the Earth,” “From the Earth to the Moon,” “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea,” and “Around the World in Eighty Days.”

Verne suffered from diabetes, and died at age 77 in 1905. He left behind so many unpublished novels that his “Extraordinary Voyages” series continued for several years, with changes made by his son Michel. (The books were later published unaltered.) Jules Verne is remembered in many ways, as a surrealist innovator, a sci-fi pioneer, and a technological prophet. To illustrate the last point, Verne wrote a novel in 1863 called “Paris in the Twentieth Century.” Wikipedia summarizes the plot as being about “a young man who lives in a world of glass skyscrapers, high-speed trains, gas-powered automobiles, calculators, and a worldwide communications network, yet cannot find happiness and who comes to a tragic end.” It was lost for years before his great-grandson found it in a safe. It was published in 1994.

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